news01.jpg

Karen Nichols/Daily Inter Lake

Two of three grizzly cubs recently captured with their mother near a garbage container by Eureka drift in and out of sleep while being held in a culvert trap Monday afternoon in Columbia Falls. The third cub was curled up beneath the other two and was not visible. The 15-year-old female and her three female cubs, each weighing about 35 pounds, will be soon be released back into the wild, where bear managers hope they can stay away from human food.

Death toll rises

It's been a rough year for female grizzlies

By JIM MANN

The Daily Inter Lake

Four female grizzly bears were in state custody Monday with depreciated prospects for survival - not a good thing considering that this year's grizzly mortalities may be unprecedented in the Northern Rockies.

There have been a total of 24 human-caused grizzly bear losses in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem so far this year, and at least 14 of those are female bears, according to Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Northern Continental Divide area covers the Bob Marshall Wilderness, Glacier National Park and most of Flathead National Forest, in addition to other areas.

"Both those [mortality] numbers are really high," Servheen said from his home in Missoula, where he did not have access to the mortality numbers from previous years. "We're way beyond our normal levels of mortality."

According to Brian Peck of the Great Bear Foundation, a grizzly bear conservation group, the ecosystem has not lost as many grizzly bears since 1974, when there were 20 nonhunting deaths and 17 legally killed by hunters.

"This is a record," said Peck, who derived the numbers from the state's 1986 grizzly bear management plan.

More recently, the highest number of human-caused bear deaths was 19, recorded in 1998 and 2000.

This year's total includes four young bears that did not actually die, Servheen said, but they are counted as mortalities because they are being "removed from the ecosystem" to zoo facilities.

Two were sent to the San Francisco Zoo last week and two others will soon be sent to a zoo in British Columbia (see related story).

The most significant figure is the loss of 14 female grizzly bears - significant because grizzlies are known for their relatively slow reproduction.

"The only population that can sustain the loss of 14 females is 1,165 bears," Peck said, citing a formula used in the ecosystem's grizzly bear recovery plan. "It takes a population that large to be able to lose 14 females, according to federal recovery guidelines."

Servheen explained that government guidelines allow for a maximum of four female grizzly deaths per year to sustain a minimum viable population of bears.

The ecosystem's grizzly bear population is unknown, although a DNA study is under way to develop population estimates.

Deaths have exceeded federal recovery standards for eight straight years, Peck said.

Servheen and state wildlife officials are gravely concerned about four female grizzly bears that were recently captured by management specialist Tim Manley in Northwest Montana.

Manley also has a male grizzly bear in a culvert trap; that bear will soon be released.

Because all of the bears had been getting into garbage and other food attractants near homes before they were captured, Manley and Servheen are concerned that they have been conditioned to repeat the offense. If that happens too often, they could face fates similar to a female grizzly bear with two female cubs that were captured near a garbage container in the Pinkham Creek drainage south of Eureka this year.

Those three bears were relocated to the Puzzle Creek drainage, far up the Flathead's Middle Fork drainage, and it didn't take long before they were "Dumpster diving" in the East Glacier area.

Their habituation to unnatural foods was eventually deemed hopeless, and all three were destroyed by Blackfeet tribal wildlife managers.

Three other grizzly bears have been killed by tribal officials so far this year despite what Servheen calls "heroic efforts" to discourage them from habituation.

"Those guys stayed up all night [many times] to try to haze those bears out of town, and it didn't work out," he said.

"But those bears didn't die in East Glacier," Servheen added. "They died when they started getting in trouble … Feeding garbage to bears is just like shooting them in the head. The end result is just the same."

Now in Manley's custody is a female bear and her three female cubs that were recently captured near the same garbage container used by a single family in the Pinkham Creek area.

"We're trying to get that situation taken care of," Manley said, noting that there's an effort to replace the container with a bear-proof one.

But serious damage may have already been done, Servheen said.

"If we can't keep this female and her offspring alive, it's going to be a real serious issue. That's four females."

The four are not typical "problem bears." The 15-year-old mother has no history with bear managers, but this year food conditions are rough in the wild, mainly because of a poor huckleberry crop.

"She's got three cubs that she's trying to keep alive," Manley said. "It's a bad huckleberry year, she's trying to make a living and she's opportunistic, so now she's taught her cubs to look for garbage."

Manley plans to release the four female bears today.

For Peck, the mortality situation has become a "crisis" that deserves enforcement of a state law that makes it illegal to intentionally feed wildlife, particularly bears. He also contends that private landowners should provide their own bear-proofing measures if that's what it takes to comply with the law.

"We should not be holding back on this at all," he said. "It is way past due for people to be going to court on that law."

State officials say proving someone intentionally fed bears can be difficult. Peck counters that any place where bears have repeatedly gotten food should be suitable for proving intent.

"There isn't a law on the books in any state that can survive if it isn't enforced," said Peck.

Bear deaths, Servheen said, should be of concern for everybody.

"Even if you don't like grizzly bears, every mortality sets back recovery" of the bears, keeping them under protection of the Endangered Species Act.